Granite Staters lifts UConn baseball team in NCAAs

The New Hampshire connection struck again for the University of Connecticut baseball team on Friday.

Brentwood's Carson Cross pitched 6 1/3 innings to earn the victory and Nashua's Billy Ferriter cracked two hits and scored two runs, leading the University of Connecticut to a 5-2 victory over the region's top seed, Virginia Tech, in an NCAA first-round game in Blackburg, Va.

.Not to be outdone, Nashua's Dan Feehan added to his school record for appearances (now 85) by pitching two-thirds of an inning to earn a hold.

The Huskies, seeded fourth in the Blacksburg regional, advanced to play second-seeded Oklahoma in a winners' bracket contest tonight at 5:30 p.m. The Sooners beat Coastal Carolina, 7-3, in the region's other game on Friday. Virginia Tech will battle Coastal Carolina in a losers' bracket game at 1 p.m...Cross, an Exeter High product, scattered six hits and allowed one run, in the fifth inning. He walked three and fanned three in raising his record to 9-4.

Ferriter singled to center and scored in Connecticut's three-run fifth, then did the same in the ninth as the Huskies tacked on an insurance run...Feehan, like Ferriter a former Nashua South Panther, threw five pitches, allowing a single, then retiring two batters on flyouts...